Be Mindful: Introducing Buddhism

There I was in the Odeon Cinema, Leicester Square, and the words, “Be mindful . . .” had just floated out of “The Phantom Menace”. What I had only suspected about the Jedi from the original Star Wars Trilogy was becoming more and more clear as each new movie came out. The religion of the Jedi was a fusion of Buddhism and Christianity. The Noble Eight-fold Path had just been quoted, and by the end of the trilogy it was clear that both Qui Gon and Obi-wan, were Boddhisatvas.

To even begin to think about the basics of what Buddhism is means thinking about the person of the Buddha. The record of the Buddha’s life was not written down until about 500 years after his death, and was largely oral transmission up to that point.

The Buddha’s Life

What there is tells us that Siddhartha Gautama was a Prince raised in total seclusion and kept from the reality of suffering in everyday life. This changed when he went on a chariot ride over successive days and saw the four sights – old age, disease, death and a sanyassin (holy man). The serenity of the holy man, and the disturbing sights which had shattered his sheltered life, led Siddhartha to leave his family and privileged life to go in search of the solution as to why there is suffering.

Having left excess, he embraced an extreme asceticism. Before long he rejected asceticism too, achieving his solution after meditating under a Bodhi tree for 40 days. At this point he is said to have achieved Nirvana and became the Enlightened One, or Buddha. He spent the rest of his life teaching the ‘Middle Path’ of Buddhism, the path which is the midway between excess and asceticism.

The teachings of Buddhism are generally summarised under the Three Universal Truths, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eight-fold Path, and one leads into the other.

The Three Universal Truths

The Three Universal truths are:

nothing in life is permanent (Anicca (A-nich-cha))

the ‘self’ does not exist, or that there is no soul (Anatta (A-nat-ta))

all life is suffering (Dukkha (Dook-a)).

The Four Noble Truths

Dukkha is the first of the Four Noble Truths, and these 4 points are often compared to the practice of medical diagnosis (symptoms-cause-solution-medicine).

If Dukkha is the symptom, then the cause is Samudaya (craving/desires (Sam-oo-dye-ya)), the solution is to end craving (Nirodha (Nee-ro-da)), and the appropriate medicine is Magga (Mag-ga), the Middle Way of the Noble Eight-fold Path.

From this point the theory is left behind and the ‘nitty-gritty’ of actually trying to live the Buddhist life begins. As with all religions, the target is often well outside the abilities of the average practitioner, but the daily task is to strive to get that little bit closer to the goal.

The Noble Eight-fold Path

To have Right View is to perceive the world around us in the correct way, no ‘rose-tinted spectacles’ permitted. Life is harsh, but we strive to do something about it.

Right Intention means exactly that: have the right intention behind every action and thought, and have goodwill to all whom you know and meet each day. One meditational practice involves picturing those whom you dislike or hate, and sending goodwill and love to them in an effort to change your own attitude to that person.

Right Speech means that you should be truthful all the time, and that you should also seek to speak positively all the time.

Right Action is exactly what it is – do the right thing always.

Right Livelihood is about earning your money/possessions in such a way as to live up to the Buddhist principles. So being a doctor is fine, but being a soldier is out.

Right Effort means living a life of kindness and generosity to all living things, not just humans.

Right Mindfulness is about being fully in the moment, totally aware of your feelings and actions, and those of the people around you. It is also about your awareness of how life’s interactions are working off one another to either promote harmony or create disharmony.

Finally, Right Concentration means concentrating the mind so that you maintain a calm and peaceful frame of mind at all times.

No ‘God’ Required

This ‘whistle-stop’ through the basics of Buddhism hasn’t even begun to look at the ideas of reincarnation and samsara (the cycle of reincarnation), but I do want to pause and think about why I have never become a Buddhist.

Some disclosure is helpful here: I have been a practicing Christian for over 25 years, and for 14 of those I was also an RE teacher. Year in and year out, I taught these same basic Buddhist teachings and admired them for the high ethical principles that they are, noting not a few similarities with Christianity. Yet these similarities were more than outweighed by one missing element – God.

Buddhism has no ‘God’ concept; it is purely about self-effort on the way to Nirvana, nothingness. The closest I ever got to a definition of Nirvana, which is even vaguely understandable, is it being that which is the moment between the flame being and not being.

Rebirth & Evolving Consciousness

Buddhism teaches the idea that you are reincarnated. Actually, the term preferred by many English-speaking Buddhists is rebirth – which is to say that there is an evolving consciousness that will take a new form after death. The form will be influenced towards either a happier or unhappier state of being.

There is, however, no ‘you’ involved in this rebirth. What actually reincarnates is the karmic force which is generated from one lifetime to the next, until it becomes purely positive. Contrary to popular understanding, ‘I’ will not have been before, nor shall ‘I’ be again. ‘I’ am nothing – literally – and, in a very real sense, ‘I’ do not matter. Only the effort to improve the karmic balance is of any use.

One main Buddhist branch allows the existence of a group of beings known as Boddhisatvas, who are those due to be enlightened but who choose not to reincarnate, in order to help others on the path from their ‘spiritual’ position in the ‘heavenlies’. I must admit that I could never follow the link between the idea that one reincarnates, in order to improve one’s self, and the teaching that the self does not exist. This makes the idea of Boddhisatvas very problematic, to say the least, and may explain why there are other branches of Buddhist thinking.

This total denial of the importance and significance of the person is, for many, unable to provide any form of comfort within life. This position is diametrically opposite to that presented by, for instance, Judaism and Christianity.

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7 Thoughts on “Be Mindful: Introducing Buddhism”

Thanks for writing this, Derek. It’s been mulling in my mind overnight and I have realised something from my own journey that might be worth sharing. It relates to the difficulty that you expressed about Buddhism having no God.

When I was first setting off the University, a young man of eighteen, I began to read the Buddhist Scriptures (the Penguin edition even, if I am not mistaken). One of the great appeals of Buddhism was that the only person it required me to deal with was myself – well, apart from doing no harm to anybody else, which I rather (naively) thought would be easy. There was no “God”, certainly not a personal being with any kind of… well, personality. It was me, alone and able to explore the path.

It seems to me, given the evidence of the 55% of people globally that Gallup identified as being religious but believing in an impersonal god or spiritual force, that many people find it easier to discount any concept of “God” in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic sense. Perhaps there is a force in the universe, but we can’t get to know it – can we? That was how I felt… and it took more than reason, logic, argument and explanation to change my mind.

Perhaps one of the attractions of Buddhist beliefs and ideas within the Western New Age approach to spirituality, along with other faith elements from the East, is not just their freshness and unfamiliarity – which, let’s face it, they are now no longer – but rather their apparent focus upon the individual… the lone spirit seeking answers… yet who also seems to never quite find them…

When I visited a Buddhist Temple many years ago I was struck by how the “priests” were living in community. Yes, they had their own path to enlightenment to explore… but they were living together, in community. Which brings me back to wondering just how far anyone will get by seeking spiritual truth alone.

Hi Mate. Gracious words as always. Given that the Enlightenment (though the Reformation was not entirely guiltless!) more than engendered the individual’s pursuit for truth over and against received wisdom, then what you say has a great deal of veracity. Though I often wonder if the Eastern mindset’s refusal to separate ‘sacred/secular’ has also got something to do with its popularity as well. I also like your take on communal searching. As Aristotle said, we are social animals!